ISO/IEC 9646 specifies a general methodology for testing the conformance of products to International Standards or CCITT Recommendations that specify OSI protocols which the products are claimed to implement. The methodology also applies to testing conformance to an International Standard or CCITT Recommendation that specifies a transfer syntax to the extent that can be determined by testing it in combination with a specific OSI protocol.The contents of ISO/IEC 9646 are also, in principle, applicable to conformance testing for ISDN two-party protocols.ISO/IEC 9646 is applicable to the different phases of the conformance testing process, these phases being characterized by three major activities. These activities are a) the specification of abstract test suites for particular OSI protocols; b) realization of the means of executing specific test suites; c) the conformance assessment process carried out by a test laboratory for a specific client, culminating in the production of a Protocol Conformance Test Report, which gives the results in terms of the protocol specification and test suite used.ISO/IEC 9646 is structured into five separate parts, each of which, apart from part 1, is applicable to just one of these activities.This part of ISO/IEC 9646 is applicable to all three activities, providing tutorial introductory material, together with definitions of common terms and concepts.NOTE- ISO/IEC 96462 deals with the requirements and guidance for the specification of abstract test suites, independent of test notation. ISO/IEC 9646-3 defines the recommended test notation. ISO/IEC 9646-4 deals with requirements and guidance for realization of the Means of Testing, and ISO/IEC 9646-5 deals with requirements and guidance for test laboratories and their clients for the conformance assessment process.ISO/IEC 9646 specifies the requirements for and gives guidance on the procedures to be followed in OSI conformance testing.ISO/IEC 9646 includes only such information as is necessary to meet the following objectives: a) to achieve an adequate level of confidence in the tests as a guide to conformance; b) to achieve comparability between the results of the corresponding tests on a particular OSI implementation applied in different places at different times; c) to facilitate communication between the parties responsible for the activities described in 1.3 above for parts 2 to 5.This part of ISO/IEC 9646 includes tutorial introductory material which provides a) an exposition of the meaning of conformance in the context of OSI; b) a description of the major categories of conformance tests; c) an introduction to the conformance assessment process; d) an introduction to the Abstract Test Methods and their applicability; e) an introduction to the concepts of test suite design.In addition, this part describes the relationship between the other parts of ISO/IEC 9646 and the activities involved in conformance testing, and introduces the concept of compliance with respect to the other parts of ISO/IEC 9646.The following are outside the scope of ISO/IEC 9646: a) certification, an administrative procedure which may follow conformance testing; b) requirements for procurement and contracts; c) testing by means of test methods which are specific to particular applications, protocols or systems; d) testing of non-protocol conformance requirements; e) test methods that involve more than two end-systems communicating together.NOTE- ISO/IEC 9646 does not apply fully to Physical layer protocols. Nevertheless, many of the concepts apply to all protocols.

First published as AS/NZS 4103.1:1993.